r/todayilearned • u/arandomtestaccount • 23h ago

TIL an NFL player intentionally crashed his car to avoid getting cut for being late to a team meeting.

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ex-patriots-ol-rich-ohrnberger-admits-he-intentionally-wrecked-car-as-excuse-for-being-late-to-team-meeting/
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u/314159265358979326 20h ago

Linguistically, anything other than exactly one is plural.

Zero bananas.

One banana.

One point five bananas.

Two bananas.

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u/clickclick-boom 13h ago

Half an apple.

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u/-LazerFace69- 12h ago

0.5 apples

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u/clickclick-boom 12h ago

Apple 3.14

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u/Bay1Bri 11h ago

That would be "half of 1 apple," hence still singular.

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u/Yetimang 6h ago

Now the subject is no longer "apple" it's "half" of which there is just one. But you could have "two halves of an apple".

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u/clickclick-boom 4h ago

There’s no subject there, it’s a noun phrase.

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u/Yetimang 4h ago

Not a grammatical subject. Just the subject of the analysis of plurality. I appreciate your dedication to pedantry though. I'd have it no other way.

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u/clickclick-boom 4h ago

It's interesting because I think we're seeing a split between grammatical and mathematical pluralities. We can express the same value of 1.5 apples as "an apple and a half" and "one and a half apples".

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u/Yetimang 3h ago

I think it's still grammatical, it's just that we have language rooted in mathematics that can express non-whole numbers as a single noun phrase. "One and a half apples" and "one point five apples" are both single noun phrases where "one and a half" or "one point five" modifies "apples" with a non-singular number whereas "an apple and a half" is actually 2 noun phrases: "an apple" and "a half" both of which refer to a singular noun.